


Kingdom Come Undone

by magicites



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Additional spoilery c/ws in author's note, Gen, Imprisonment, MAJOR spoilers through Partizan Ep 28, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25542697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: I will take Clementine Kesh,thinks Gur Sevraq,and I will shape her into something grand.
Relationships: Clementine Kesh & Gur Sevraq
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	Kingdom Come Undone

**Author's Note:**

> so uh if you think about it, gur sevraq tries to be clem's manic pixie dream spider. they don't do a good job of it but they sure do try. 
> 
> i can't stop thinking about clem and gur. thanks for that FatT. you got me good. big thanks to danny for letting me shove this at her in chunks as i wrote it.
> 
> spoilery content warnings: major character death and some pretty intense violence at the end! nothing more extreme than what canon shows.

Clementine Kesh could carry a kingdom on her shoulders. 

The keyword is  _ could. _

As battle decimates the Prophet’s Path, Gur Sevraq watches Clementine Kesh. There is promise in her stalwart desire to  _ lead from the front, _ as they heard her insist to one of her soldiers. They expected her words to be empty, for her to drift towards the back as the conflict escalated. In a rarely beautiful surprise, their prediction is wrong. She throws herself into battle without hesitation, slamming her shoulders against brick walls as if the weight of her stubbornness could be enough to topple buildings.

And maybe it could, Gur supposes. The future is a web stretching before their mind, every strand rippling out from the tightly compacted center of the present. Some strands lead to the same edge. Others branch off, too fundamentally changed by the journey to ever be the same. It is something that can be reshaped, fractals breaking apart and stitching back together with every new action. A malleable, soft thing. Since the Divine Future found a home in Gur Sevreq’s hands, they’ve worked on molding it into a more pleasing, hopeful shape.

Clementine’s culture poisons her. She is too used to the throne. Her legs are too weak to support her own weight. She can lead from the front like a military commander, but life is more than battles and orders. Even tyrants have advisors, as sycophantic as they may be. Who vouches for Clementine? Sovereign Immunity seems to care for her, but Gur has heard tales of the farmer. Every good farmer knows that even the most brittle of branches can be made into a good tool with enough effort. 

She is still young enough to take a different path. She is her mother’s daughter, but she is not her mother. No one, not even one in the crib of Kesh, is born a Crysanth. The difference between Clementine and her mother, at least from here, is that Clementine can be guided away from tyranny.

Who is Gur Sevraq, if not a guide?

He finds her after the battle and he asks her a simple question: what future does she envision? Here too, he finds another difference from her mother. Crysanth does not care for the adoration of her people, only the power that their fear gives her. Feelings cannot overthrow a throne.

Clementine Kesh craves their love. 

How fascinating.

Under her banner, perhaps Kesh could change. Where Sovereign Immunity may see a scythe, and where the members of the Rapid Evening may only see a scepter, Gur sees clay. Still soft, still malleable. 

_ I will take Clementine Kesh, _ thinks Gur Sevraq,  _ and I will shape her into something grand. _

❅❅

Clementine is a brittle thing, he learns. She thinks that letting prisoners taste the bright light of the outside world in exchange for their safety is mercy. She cannot fathom anything but the freedom her wealth and status affords her. 

Technically, Gur Sevraq is also a prisoner. But only technically. Can you kidnap someone who consents? Can you imprison someone who loves to read in a library? To call themself imprisoned feels almost uncouth. They think of Exeter Leap, of Ver’million, of Sovereign Immunity, and of all the other prisoners Clementine sends to die every time she thinks their sacrifice can court favor from her mother.

Every time they leave, she marches at their side. She leads them from the front. She comes back from missions with the most injuries, blood pooling in the gaps between her ivory teeth. Gur Sevraq lets the sight breathe hope into them.

She falls ill. Terribly so. Gur keeps her company even when she doesn't want any. On the days when she is too ill to be vain, relegated to a shadow in her bed and a pair of empty eyes locked on the window, Gur brings her tea. They cut up fruit, delicate and colorful, and leave it at her bedside. 

She does not speak of it, but never once does the plate return full. He hopes she sees it for what it is. 

They play games together. She sees them as silly things, they know. She is not a strategist. She has a goal in mind, but setting the board to benefit her in the long run proves to be a struggle. She is too rash, too self-absorbed, to truly see her potential.

He beats her, time and time again. The more she loses, the more he clings to faith. He knows better than most how all it takes for a paradigm to shift is one solid epiphany.

They were meant to meet. Her haughty voice is scattered across every branch, spun from the same silk that weaves the future’s web. In some, they meet on the Prophet’s Path, just as they did. In others, they meet at the end of the Path, her as her mother’s diplomat and him as the hope of the Resin Heart. In those branches, she is a half-step from tyranny.

And in others still, they meet far too late. When power has sapped her of all love. She is cold and merciless, so coddled by the cruelty of Kesh that she is Crysanth in a paler shade. 

In those, he kills her more often than not. The blood of Elects stains him. What can the blood of a princess do to him?

He goes to her rooms. Once more, she is in bed, but he recognizes the clench of her jaw as she forces herself into a sitting position.

“You’re back,” she says, her voice weak. Her hair is unkempt, running in a matted tangle down her back. A thin veneer of sweat glistens on her forehead.

He finds an old rag in the corner of the room — something a doctor must have left for her and forgotten to take back. He wets the rag and comes to her bedside, setting both it and the plate of fruit and nuts he’s brought on the closest table. “For you,” he says.

She looks down at the fruit. Slowly, she takes a slice and nibbles on it. Her hands shake from the effort.

Then she looks up at him. 

“Thank you,” she says softly.

There is hope for her yet. They are certain of this.

“Of course, Clementine. If you need help, all you need do is call. I will come.”

It is hardly an offer.

It is a plea.

❅❅

They vow to break the millenium, and still Clementine Kesh refuses to see the error of her ways.

❅❅

“I suppose you think I had this coming,” Clementine says in lieu of a greeting. She is the most lavish prisoner Gur has ever seen. Millennium Break keeps the brig clean and they treat their prisoners well. Even the cell that steals all of Clementine’s days is immaculate enough that she can sit on the ground and not have to worry about dirtying her white skirt.

Prisoners anywhere else in the galaxy do not get to wear Clementine’s clothing in prison. Her skirt is asymmetrical, trailing down until it hits a thin knee. Wide sleeves flare out at her elbows and a see-through lace clings to her collarbones. 

“You are wearing heels in prison,” Gur Sevraq says.

“These are the only colorful pair I was allowed to bring in here,” she says. 

Gur Sevraq wants to laugh. He clings to his sense of self-control the way rudderless ships cling to shore. It is not enough to keep a sense of incredulous disbelief out of his voice. “Don’t you understand what you’re given? Even now?”

“This was my ship. I took it!”

_ “They _ took it under your banner.”

“Yes, yes! Exactly! Under  _ my  _ banner!” She leans towards him, all wrong angles and misplaced joy. He is overtaken by the sudden, violent urge to kick her arms out from where they support her. 

Violence has a place and a purpose. They are better than senseless rage. 

They are better than this.

“All this time, and you’ve still failed to learn? Clementine,” and as they say this, they sink down to her level. Her eyes are cold and angry. She looks more and more like her mother these days. “Do you know the meaning of the word empathy?”

“Do you?” she responds.

Gur Sevraq gestures around them. There is still a terrible part of them that wants to pin Clementine to the ground and terrify her until she understands what it feels like to be trapped with no hope of escape. They want to tear apart everything she’s ever loved so she can understand loss.

There are good rulers in practice. There are so few in reality. There is no such thing as a good ruler without empathy.

Perhaps Clementine wishes for a kingdom of sycophants, not souls.

Against logic, they still hope.

“I’m sitting across from you, aren’t I?” they say.

❅❅

Cruciat falls, taking the name  _ Kesh _ with it.

Clementine lives at the end of an era never meant to see light. Royalty lives in her veins. Ruling does not.

Gur sees that now. The strands that once led to her as Queen whip in the storm they see on the horizon, a series of broken, lost things. The future’s web points to exile on even the most hopeful branches.

On the least hopeful: a slow death.

Maybe it’s pity that leads Gur Sevraq over to her. There is no one left at her side. Who would hold love for the warden that kept them imprisoned? What revolutionary can love the one who sees the establishment as innate righteousness? 

One more conversation. One more chance, however foolish it may be, to help her see the truth.

It is only meant to be a conversation.

❅❅

What is dedication if not placing your life in the hands of another, if it is not wrapping their fingers around the threads of your fate and whispering to them to do what they will with your future? 

Gur Sevraq gave his life to his faith.

He gives his death to Clementine.

It is not a pretty ending. They will not sing about this in the greatest songs. History books will not recount it with awe and reverence. Not the parts that truly happen: the grunt of pain as Clementine’s shoulder blade shatters on an impact with a spire off the side of Icebreaker prime, the hideous shriek of metal as she wedges her knife under another one of Gur’s chest plates and flicks it into the sea, the twin trails of blood and pearlescent fluid that twist and dance before them like the lace trains that follow blushing brides at rich Kesh weddings.

She is screaming, even now. They are silent; their body screams for them as it is torn apart. All they have lived for falls around them. The church will need to find a new leader. A better leader.

Something she has never understood. 

Gur Sevraq has heard that at the brink of death, one’s life is supposed to flash before their eyes. And maybe that happens for Clementine, if she can see through the haze of her rage long enough to perceive anything but Gur.

Gur does not see the past. He only sees a future he can no longer take part in. Strands that will never come to pass thanks to their broken bodies branch out before him, weaving their way through and tangling together with all the strands that now belong to nothing but speculation. He is unable to nudge potentials into sharp realization.

He is no longer able to do anything but fall. Down, and down.

Clementine screams.

One stands out amongst the rest. Even through the anger, through the rage and betrayal and bitterness that strikes another gash into Clementine’s pale skin, they see a future that will never come to pass.

In it, Cruciat stands tall and beautiful. The buildings have changed, opulence giving way to the simple practicality that rebuilding after a siege demands. Clementine still trails the streets in her snow white clothing, heels clacking a battlefield beat into the ground below, but she walks the streets.

She walks the streets.

She greets the people by name. She often gets their names wrong. She is still cold, still too haughty for her own good, but she greets them all the same.

They turned her throne into a table, but they relinquished the head seat to her. Gur Sevraq sits at her right side as the table fills with advisors and ministers. There are voices here, and only once does Clementine speak over them.

She is not perfect. Selfishness is born and bred into Clementine; to strip her of that is to strip her of her very skin. 

But she is better.

She is not the broken thing clinging to them now, still trying to tear the life from their frame.

They tear her back in turn.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They hit the water hard.


End file.
